BULLETIN 1
UN Biodiversity Conference COP16 talks resume in Rome: What’s at stake?

Figure: Delegates at the UN Biodiversity COP16, Cali, Colombia, November 2024. ©UN Biodiversity
FAO 20/02/2025
Rome - Unfinished biodiversity negotiations are back on the table. After a groundbreaking session in Cali, Colombia, delegations are reconvening in Rome to tackle unfinished business that will be critical for biodiversity action – with transforming agrifood systems emerging as a central element for global success.
The resumed session of the sixteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) will take place at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) headquarters in Rome from 25–27 February 2025.
For FAO, this conference is a pivotal opportunity to emphasize a vital message: transforming our agrifood systems is not just beneficial, it is indispensable for safeguarding global biodiversity.
To understand this and other critical issues at stake in these extended negotiations, FAO Newsroom spoke with Kaveh Zahedi, Director of FAO’s Office for Climate, Biodiversity and Environment.
See https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/un-biodiversity-conference-cop16-talks-resume-in-rome--what-s-at-stake/en

BULLETIN 2

G20: Food security is vital for peace, stability and human dignity, FAO says

Figure: Conflict, policy failures, and extreme climate events threaten our ability to ensure stable agrifood systems and risk deepening global inequalities. ©FAO/Akuot Mayak
FAO 20/02/2025
Johannesburg – Food security is about peace, stability, and human dignity, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, told G20 Foreign Ministers gathered in Johannesburg to discuss the global geopolitical situation.
According to the latest UN figures, 733 million people worldwide face chronic hunger, 2.3 billion are food insecure, and 2.8 billion lack access to healthy diets.
Conflict remains one of the greatest threats to food security, from the Sahel and Haiti to Ukraine and Gaza. At the same time, the continued neglect of agrifood systems in regions vulnerable to instability accelerates economic collapse and adds to conflict.
In Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan, for example, the degradation of agrifood systems – intensified by policy failures - has increased tensions between farmers and pastoralists competing for limited resources.
Beyond conflict and policy failures, the intensity and frequency of extreme climate events add to the challenges. Rising temperatures and extreme weather disrupt food production, increase risks for farmers, affect disease patterns, and accelerate migration, all of which undermine efforts to end hunger by 2030.
“These challenges threaten our ability to ensure stable agrifood systems and risk deepening global inequalities,” Qu told the meeting on Thursday.
The Director-General said addressing such inequalities is critical since many weaknesses in our agrifood systems arise from unequal access to innovation, technology, natural resources, and healthy diets.
In this context of risks and uncertainties, international trade plays a critical role in global food security by ensuring food moves efficiently from surplus to deficit regions.
This is why the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) - a G20 initiative hosted by FAO since 2011 - plays a key role in enhancing market transparency and policy coordination, Qu said.
Agrifood systems sustain natural resources, livelihoods, and economic development, employing over 1.2 billion people and supporting over 3.8 billion globally.
Crucially, “food security is not just about policy - it is about peace, stability, and human dignity,” Qu said. That is why “we must act now to ensure political commitment and the necessary investment for nutritious and healthy foods for all.”
See https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/g20--food-security-is-vital-for-peace--stability-and-human-dignity--fao-says/en

SCIENTIFIC NEWS
First Report of Lasiodiplodia theobromae Causing Wilt and Fruit Rot of Pepper in Hainan Province, China
Lizhu Tang, Wentao Huang, Jiaqi Wang, Shaopeng Huang, Yu Liu, Maofu Li, Shun Feng
Plant Dis.; 2025 Feb 5. doi: 10.1094/PDIS-10-24-2161-PDN. Online ahead of print.

 

  

Abstract
Ornamental pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) is an economically important plant with extensive genetic diversity (Zhang et al. 2020). In September 2022, symptoms of wilt and fruit rot were identified in approximately 0.02 hectares of an ornamental pepper plantation in Haikou, Hainan Province, China (110°32' E, 20°06' N). Disease severity reached 85%, with an incidence rate of 90%. Symptoms started as black foliar spots that expanded into large lesions, spreading to fruits and stems, causing wilting (Fig. S1). Samples from symptomatic leaves, fruits, and stems of 27 plants were surface-sterilized with 75% ethanol for 30 s, rinsed five times with sterile water, air-dried, plated on potato dextrose agar (PDA), and incubated at 28°C for 5 to 6 days. To obtain pure fungal cultures, initial isolates were subcultured onto fresh PDA. Among the 27 fungal cultures, 11 isolates from leaves and fruits consistently formed gray to olivaceous colonies. Isolate LJY224 initially produced grayish-white, fluffy mycelia with radiating aerial hyphae. Over time, the colony became grayish-black and produced black, nearly spherical pycnidia. The conidia were oval, initially transparent, and single-celled. Mature conidia were dark brown, septate, with longitudinal striations, averaging 11.55 ± 0.75 µm in width and 24.93 ± 1.50 µm in length (n=35) (Fig. S2), indicating Lasiodiplodia spp. Genomic DNA was extracted using a fungal DNA extraction kit (OMEGA BIO-TEK, GZ Feiyang Biotech Co., Ltd., Guangzhou, China). Molecular identification involved sequencing the rRNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and genes encoding β-tubulin (TUB) and translation elongation factor 1-α (TEF1) with primers ITS1/ITS4, Bt2a/Bt2b, and EF1-983F/EF1-2218R, respectively (White et al. 1990; Rosado et al. 2016; Rehner and Buckley 2005). BLASTn searches with the obtained ITS, TUB, and TEF1 sequences (GenBank accessions OQ612711, OR039814, OR039813) revealed 98% to 100% identity with Lasiodiplodia theobromae reference sequences from the NCBI database (OR018404, KR260830, MN461169), matching 541/548, 446/446, and 947/955 base pairs, respectively. A phylogenetic tree was constructed using concatenated multi-locus sequence analysis (MLSA) of ITS, TUB, and TEF1 (Fig. S3). To fulfill Koch's postulates, healthy 3-month-old ornamental pepper plants were inoculated by spraying the entire plant with a conidial suspension (50 ml, 107 conidia/L) of LJY224, using sterile water as a negative control. Each treatment included three replicates. Plants were maintained at 25°C, 75% humidity, under a 12-h light/dark cycle, and monitored daily. After 14 days, inoculated plants developed black foliar spots that expanded into large lesions, spreading to fruits and stems, and causing wilting, consistent with initial symptoms, while control plants remained healthy (Fig. S4). The re-isolated pathogen showed identical morphology to the original strain. In contrast, no fungi were isolated or recovered from the plants inoculated with water. Results from disease symptoms, colony and spore morphology, pathogenicity tests, and multi-locus DNA sequence analysis suggest that L. theobromae was the pathogen responsible for the disease symptoms on ornamental peppers. L. theobromae is closely related to Botryosphaeria dothidea, both of which cause fruit rot in peppers (Rui et al. 2023). To our knowledge, this is the first report of L. theobromae causing leaf wilt and fruit rot in ornamental pepper in Hainan Province, China, offering insights to mitigate crop losses.
See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39908405/